Angel's Pain (16 page)

“Yeah, two down, two to go. I'm going to put up the sun shields on those rear windows, Ilyana. If you can manage it, unzip the bags and get them out. We're going to need the bags empty to rescue Seth and Vixen.”

“Can we make it to them before sunset?”

“It's only a couple of hours south. We've got plenty of time.”

She hoped.

J
ust before sunrise, Reaper pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of a small motel on the outskirts of Byram.

“I wish we could catch up to Crisa before we rest,” Briar said. “I hate that we have to wait.”

“I know. I hate it, too, but we can't risk getting caught by the sun.” Reaper opened the car door, got out and pocketed the keys. “We'll find her tonight. I promise.”

“I hope so.”

“How's your head?” he asked.

“Okay at the moment. Just a dull ache. I'm not sure what's better, being able to know where she is, what she's doing, feeling, with the pain raging, or feeling cut off from her entirely, but without the pain.”

“Come on.” He took her arm, and led her away from the motel.

She glanced up at him with a frown. “We're not getting a room?”

“I'm not comfortable staying here. Dwyer arranged for the car, so he likely knows exactly what we're driving, right down to the plate number. He can move freely by day, and he has the connections to be informed when the vehicle is spotted.” He shook his head. “We'll leave the Jeep here. Find a safe place to rest elsewhere.”

She nodded. “And at sundown, when we rise and come back for it? Who's to say he won't be right here waiting?”

Reaper lifted his brows. “You're right.” Then he turned, walked back to the Jeep and tossed the keys inside just in case they had to abandon it for good. When he returned to her side, he said, “You think like a cop, you know that?”

“I think like a criminal,” she told him. “Big difference.”

They walked until they found a likely resting place, a warehouse, closed for the night, with an open window on the second story and only one lone security guard lurking outside.

“Ready?” Reaper asked, looking up at the window.

Briar was looking at the guard. “I could use a snack.”

“It'll have to wait. Come on.” He pushed off with his powerful legs, launching himself into the air and unerringly right through the window, somersaulting onto the floor on the other side. Then he rose and looked back down at her.

She gave one last longing glance at the security guard, sighed and jumped up to join him.

 

Matt waited until morning, when he and Derry were having breakfast, to ask him about the phone call. He'd lain in bed for the remainder of the night, wide awake. But since Derry had gone right back to sleep, he figured it was best to wait. He'd decided not to run away last night while the guy was sleeping. Not that he trusted Derry or anything, but he thought he would know if the man were getting close to making the decision to kill him. He was pretty sure he was still safe—for now, anyway. Besides, with Derry's bed pulled right across the doorway, it would have been impossible to get out without waking him.

And the lure of the promise that Derry could help him get back to his mother was too much to resist.

Derry seemed better in the morning. Didn't seem so stiff when he came out of the shower, walked a little straighter, his stride a little stronger. And beyond all that, Matt could sense it.

“You're feeling better today,” he said.

Derry was pulling on his shirt. It was sweat-stained, even though he'd washed it in the sink the night before and hung it from the shower curtain rod to dry. “Yeah, quite a bit.”

“The medicine is helping. That's good. So who is Reaper?”

“A friend.”

“Vampire friend or a regular one?”

Derry slanted him a speculative look. “Vampire. But one of the good ones.”

“There are good ones?”

The way the man looked at him made Matt think he'd just asked a pretty stupid question. But eventually the guy smiled a little, and tousled his hair as if he were a little kid. “Vampires are just like everybody else, Matt. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. And there are some who fall somewhere in between. Reaper's a good one.”

“And my dad's a bad one,” Matt said softly. When Derry didn't answer, he nodded. “It's okay, I know. It's just, I thought they were all like him. He's the only one I ever really knew.”

“He's had others with him. Didn't you ever meet any of them?”

“None of the real ones, no. Dad kept me away from them. I don't think they even knew I was around.” He shrugged. “I saw those big dumb ones now and then. They scared me.”

“They scare everyone.”

“So your friend is coming to see you?”

“Yeah.”

“And who's Crisa?”

Derrick's eyes narrowed. “You really
were
payin' attention to that phone call, weren't you?”

Matt shrugged and averted his eyes, afraid he was giving too much away.

“Truth is, Matt, I've been meanin' to talk to you about Crisa. I don't get the feelin' your dad has taught you a lot about…about what you are.”

“One of the Chosen.”

“And do you know what that means?”

“It means I'm better than ordinary people. Like a god or something.”

Derry lowered his eyes. “No. It just means you can become a vampire if you want to.”

“Yeah, but vampires are stronger and faster than everybody else. And they live forever. How is that not better?”

“Elephants are stronger than people. Tigers are faster. Tortoises live longer. Doesn't make them gods, pal.”

Matt sighed. “Guess not.” He could sense that Derry was thinking other things. He was thinking about telling him that he wouldn't live as long as ordinary humans did if he didn't become a vampire. And he was thinking about telling him that vampires didn't necessarily live forever, either, that they could die like anyone else. Then he decided to let someone else handle all that. And it crossed his mind that maybe Matt's mom should be the one to have that discussion with him.

The subjects—about dying and stuff—made Matt uneasy, but he forgot all that when he heard that one final thought cross Derry's mind: about his mom. It was the first time he felt sure Derry hadn't been lying to him. His mom really must be alive.

His heart felt like it was swelling up in his chest, and he had to blink fast to keep his eyes dry. “So tell me about Crisa, then,” he said, his voice tight and soft, because somehow it was too hard to make it very loud.

“Okay. Well, first you need to know how vampires feel about the Chosen. People like you, who have a certain blood antigen in them.”

“They can tell who we are?”

“Oh, yeah. They sense you very strongly. And there's some kind of instinctive urge they have to protect you, kind of watch out for you. Folklore says they couldn't hurt you if they wanted to, though I've seen a few vamps who made me doubt that. But mostly, they're like guardian angels to you guys.”

“Cool.”

“They usually have a more powerful connection to one of you than they do to any other. And I think the one with the most powerful connection to you is Crisa.”

That brought Matt's head up fast. “But I don't even know her.”

“Doesn't matter. The thing is, she's not…normal.”

Matt lifted his brows. “Is she gonna hurt me?”

“No. She's a grown-up, but she's kind of like a little girl in a grown-up body. You know what I mean?”

“You mean she's mental?”

“Maybe. A little. She thinks you're in trouble, and she's on her way here to try to help you. But you should know that you're a lot safer with me. Like I said, she's not normal, and she's not as sharp as most. Heck, I think you have a firmer grasp on things than she does. So if she shows up here, you can't go with her, okay?”

And now Derry was, Matt sensed, looking out for his own best interests. Even Derry thought Matt might be better off with this Crisa. Deep down. But he wasn't saying so.

“How does she know where I am?” Matt asked.

“I don't know. Senses it, I guess.”

“Why does she think I'm in trouble?”
Because I am,
Matt thought, answering his own question and knowing Derry wouldn't tell the truth.

“I don't know. Like I said, she's not quite right.”

“But vampires sense when the Chosen are in trouble. You just said so. So she must be sensing it, right?”

He met Matt's eyes. “You're safe with me.”

“Yeah, unless my dad doesn't do what you want him to.” Matt lowered his head and shook it. “Does my dad know about her?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“And your friend, Reaper? Does he know about her?”

“Yeah. He's comin' up here because of her. She's his friend. He wants to help her.”

“Why? Is she in trouble, too?”

Derry looked at the kid. “She's kind of…sick right now.”

“Oh.” Matt nodded slowly. He'd heard enough of the phone call to put the rest together on his own. Derry was using Crisa to get this Reaper to come to him. Just like he was using Matt to get his father to turn himself in to the authorities. Derry was a user. He hadn't deserved what Matt's dad had done to him, and he seemed like a decent guy, but Matt thought he was reading the man fairly well. He was pretty sure Derry would do anything, hurt anybody, to get what he wanted.

The only difference between Derry and his dad was that his dad's goals were bad—money and power and stuff like that. And Derry's were good, supposedly, because he worked for the government, after all, and he was mostly trying to bring a bad guy—his dad—to justice. Make him stop killing people all the time. That was probably a pretty good goal.

But aside from that, the two of them weren't much different.

Matt wondered briefly what Derry wanted with this Reaper guy. And then he wondered what Crisa was like. His protector. He hadn't even known he had one, besides his mom, and he'd thought he'd lost her a long time ago. It was kind of cool to think there was someone else who wanted to look out for him. Crazy or not, Matt had a gut feeling that he would be safer with Crisa than he would be with his father
or
with Derry. And he knew Derry thought so, too.

“When do you think they'll get here?” he asked, suddenly eager.

“Tonight,” Derry said. Then he clapped a hand to the back of Matt's shoulder. “Let's go out to breakfast, huh?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Matt nodded, as, deep inside his head, he thought about what he was going to do.

 

By nightfall, Roxy and Ilyana had driven Shirley and her unconscious passengers five hundred miles closer to home. They'd been taking turns behind the wheel. Ilyana was driving at the moment, with Roxy resting in the passenger seat.

When the sun fully set and she sensed movement from the back, Roxy straightened up and hit the button that would lower the sunproof barrier behind the front set of seats, then turned to eye her cohorts as they roused from their deathlike slumber. She hit another button to open the bottom compartment, where Mirabella was already awake and waiting to be let out.

“Well, well, well,” Roxy said, as they sat up, one after the other. “You have anything you'd like to say to us?”

“What the hell?” Jack looked around, then faced her again with a grin that made him more handsome than he was already, the devil. “Roxy! You rescued us!”

“Of course I did. I mean,
we
did.” She looked at her fingernails and shrugged. “Imagine that, just a couple of mortals, mostly useless, saving your sorry asses from an army of drones. Who'd have guessed it?”

Jack leaned over the seat, gripped her head and kissed her right on the mouth. “You kick ass, Roxy.” And with a glance at Ilyana he added, “Both of you. How the hell did you do it?”

“We went in by day, figuring the drones would be as comatose as you guys were. Used the body bags to haul you and Topaz out to the van, then repeated the whole process when we got to where Seth and Vixen were. And then, after patting each other on the back a few times, we headed east.”

“That was dangerous, Roxy,” Seth said softly. “Gregor could have had people, mortals, watching, or—”

“Yeah, yeah. You'd have done the same for us.”

“Yes,” Vixen said. “We would have.”

“Thank you, Roxy,” Topaz told her. “And you, too, Ilyana. I couldn't have taken another night sitting there, surrounded by those oversized gorillas.” She sighed and smoothed her long mink-colored hair with one hand.

“How long before we'll be home?”

“Oh, we're not going home. We're cutting north, heading for Connecticut.”

“Why Connecticut?” Jack asked. “Is that where Reaper is?”

“Yeah. And Briar—and Crisa, as far as we know. Also on hand, apparently, is Raphael's former CIA boss, a guy named Dwyer. And according to him, Gregor is there, as well.”